Salesforce unveils new AI features to accelerate enterprise adoption at Dreamforce

At Dreamforce, Salesforce introduced enhanced AI-driven capabilities for its Agentforce platform, focusing on simplifying deployment and expanding enterprise use, with Slack now central as the conversational gateway.

At Salesforce’s recent Dreamforce conference, the company rolled out significant enhancements to its AI-driven Agentforce platform, underscoring its vision to bridge the gap between advanced AI capabilities and their practical adoption by enterprises. Sal...

esforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff framed the current moment as one where technological innovation is outpacing customer adoption, highlighting an industry-wide challenge as companies reckon with the complexities of embedding AI agents into business processes.

Salesforce’s Agentforce has reportedly seen the fastest adoption rate for any product the company has launched, reaching about 12,500 customers in the past year—over 8% of Salesforce’s total customer base. However, only around 6,000 of these engagements are paid, a factor contributing to Salesforce’s modest revenue growth and recent stock market pressures. Still, buoyed by improved forecasts linked to Agentforce’s potential, Salesforce has updated its guidance, expecting organic sales growth to surpass 10% annually by 2026 and projecting revenues to exceed $60 billion by 2030, a figure that outstrips Wall Street consensus. This positive outlook propelled Salesforce stock upward, reflecting investor confidence in the company’s AI strategy.

At Dreamforce, Salesforce introduced new Agentforce features designed to simplify AI agent creation and use within enterprises. The Agent Builder enables users to create AI agents through simple natural language descriptions, reducing the need for manual configuration. A new voice interface, powered partly by OpenAI’s models, promises more intuitive interaction with agents. Additionally, Agent Script combines rule-based approaches with the flexible reasoning of large language models, while a vibe-coding tool targets experienced developers to craft sophisticated agent workflows using natural language inputs.

Perhaps the most strategic development is the elevation of Slack as the primary “conversational gateway” across Salesforce’s offerings, including AI tools. Having acquired Slack in 2020, Salesforce envisions users interacting with AI agents directly through Slack’s chat interface, thereby streamlining workflows across its Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and beyond. Slack CEO Denise Dresser emphasised that the platform’s ability to support person-to-person, team, and AI interactions in one space gives it a unique advantage over competitors focusing solely on human-to-AI collaboration.

Salesforce is also broadening its AI capabilities through deeper partnerships with major AI firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The integration of OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude models into the Agentforce 360 platform is designed to deliver cutting-edge generative AI functionalities tailored for highly regulated sectors including finance and healthcare. This strategic alliance further reinforces Agentforce as a robust platform, enabling enterprises to leverage AI for customer data analysis and operational automation within a secure and compliant framework.

The adoption of AI agents within Salesforce’s customer base is gaining momentum, with CEO Benioff noting a doubling of paying Agentforce customers over six months to 6,000. This marks a shift from pilot projects to more widespread enterprise integration—a growth trajectory also reflected in Salesforce’s fiscal 2025 earnings report. The company reported a 120% year-over-year increase in Annual Recurring Revenue from AI and Data Cloud services, reaching $900 million, driven by Fortune 100 companies that are rapidly embedding AI-enhanced customer relationship management tools. Salesforce’s Data Cloud now manages over 50 trillion records, illustrating the massive scale of data underpinning its AI operations.

Success stories from early adopters showcased at Dreamforce illustrate the varied uses of AI agents. PepsiCo’s deployment improves service for small retailers often overlooked by sales representatives, while Dell automates supplier onboarding, cutting processing times from months to days. Although some applications, like Williams & Sonoma’s AI agent offering recipe and product suggestions, may appear more gimmicky, the overall trend points to increasing operational value.

Supporting the enterprise transition, Salesforce is expanding its team of “forward-deployed engineers” who work closely with customers to build scalable and consistent AI agents integrated into business workflows. Adam Evans, Salesforce AI’s executive vice president, acknowledged the difficulty in moving enterprises beyond experimentation towards consistent value creation through AI.

The broader market context illustrates a cautious but growing embrace of AI across industries. According to Salesforce’s Agentic Enterprise Index for the first half of 2025, the financial services sector experienced an average monthly AI action growth rate of 105%. Consumer feedback reveals that users of customer service AI agents are more than twice as likely to report improved experiences, with a significant minority preferring automated financial budgeting tools.

The surge in AI adoption among small and medium-sized businesses is equally notable. A Salesforce survey of 3,350 SMB leaders found that 91% of those employing AI reported revenue increases, with nearly 80% viewing AI as transformative to their operations. Improved scalability and profit margins were reported by over 85% of these businesses, underscoring the broad economic potential of AI beyond large enterprises.

While enthusiasm is building, Salesforce’s leadership and industry experts acknowledge that AI adoption in enterprise software will likely lag behind the rapid uptake seen with consumer-facing AI technologies like ChatGPT. The future of AI in business is thus envisioned as a gradual integration process, where AI agents evolve alongside existing software architectures rather than replacing them outright.

This gradual adoption is taking place against a backdrop of varied developments in AI: OpenAI recently launched its AI-powered ChatGPT Atlas browser, Walmart partnered with OpenAI to enable conversational shopping, and Google announced an AI model for identifying cancer-related genetic mutations. Meanwhile, leading AI researchers caution that true artificial general intelligence remains years away, and debates continue over AI safety, regulatory capture, and the environmental impact of the data centre build-out powering AI growth.

For Salesforce, the emphasis remains on leveraging AI to enhance customer relationships, streamline operations, and build scalable enterprise solutions. With expanded partnerships, innovative features focusing on user-friendly AI agent deployment, and Slack positioned as the conversational hub, Salesforce is staking a major claim in shaping how AI integrates into business workflows in the years ahead. Yet, as Benioff and others have candidly acknowledged, the bridge between AI potential and widespread adoption will require patience, technical expertise, and continued innovation.

Source: Noah Wire Services